Preface
“It takes less time to do a thing right than it does to explain why you did it wrong”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The title of this book has been carefully chosen in order to encourage awareness of the very clear distinction that exists between the concepts of Reliability Technology and Reliability Theory.
Reliability Technology is concerned with the application of managerial, scientific, and engineering principles in pursuit of the delivery of failure-free product. Reliability Technology addresses the practical application of tools and processes that target failure prevention, and pays particular attention to the many sources of threat to product reliability that cannot be addressed by mathematical modelling. Unreliable products can be (and often are) manufactured from a kit of reliable parts. Reliability Theory on the other hand, as described in many texts, is predominantly concerned with the application of statistical techniques and the manipulation of test data in order to meet, with some estimated degree of accuracy, a contractually agreed failure rate probability target. This approach can be interpreted as“planning for failure”.
It is hoped that this book will be read as a companion volume to Patrick D. T. O'Connor's book Practical Reliability Engineering, Fifth Edition, to which numerous references are made. This textbook includes a substantial chapter devoted to the development and implementation of cost-effective Environmental Stress Screening methodologies based ...
